Let's combine the two most popular topics on the internet today into one: Windows 7 on netbooks. Microsoft has already confirmed that it will ship a version of Windows 7 designed for netbooks, the popular small laptops that appear to be the only bright spot in an otherwise abysmal PC industry climate. However, with various reports indicating that Windows 7 already runs fine on netbooks, this raises the question: what exactly is Microsoft planning?

I'm not so optimistic regarding Microsoft creating a netbook-tailored OS. In most cases, what they'll do is removing (what they think are) unnecessary features. For one, hardware limitations will be put in place (like no more than 2 Gb or RAM or no HDD bigger than 160 Gb), just like they did with XP Starter Edition, that way they could lower the price. Additionally, I believe Win7 still takes too much disk space. A clean but fully patched virtual machine I created used almost 10 Gb. Compare that to Linux or XP ~ 2-3 Gb. Still it's better than Vista, but far from lightweight, specially for an 8 or 16 Gb SSD.